Obeidi, Iraq – The U.S. military pronounced its week-long offensive near the Syrian border over Saturday, saying it had successfully “neutralized” an insurgent sanctuary and killed more than 125 militants.

Many more suspected insurgents were injured, and 39 with “intelligence value” were captured, the military said in a statement. It provided no details about the detainees.

Nine U.S. Marines were killed and 40 injured during the campaign known as Operation Matador, during which American forces searched the Euphrates River villages of Karabilah, Rommana and Obeidi for followers of Iraq’s most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The pronouncement came hours after U.S. forces had encircled Obeidi, causing frightened residents to flee indoors as U.S. helicopters hovered overhead and military vehicles briefly rumbled through Obeidi’s old quarter, meeting no resistance.

Insurgents, meanwhile, staged a series of attacks elsewhere in Iraq, killing at least 10 people, including a top Iraqi Foreign Ministry official who was assassinated in a drive-by shooting as he stood outside his Baghdad home.

Also Saturday, U.S. airstrikes destroyed two unoccupied buildings near Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, that the military identified as an insurgent command center.

Marines based in the area said the targeted buildings were about 20 miles northwest of Fallujah, the scene of a large-scale November campaign to rout militants responsible for multiple attacks. No casualties were immediately reported.

More than 1,000 Marines, soldiers and sailors participated in Operation Matador, which began May 7 in Qaim, a border town of 50,000 people about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Marines met resistance soon after from heavily armed insurgents – some in body armor – in the nearby village of Obeidi, home to 10,000 people, the statement said.

Some 70 insurgents were killed in the first 24 hours alone, the military said.

Thousands have fled the area, pitching tents along sand-blown desert highways or seeking shelter in schools and mosques in nearby towns.

The remote desert region, an ancient smuggling route and insurgent hide-out, had been used as a staging area where fighters who slipped over the border from Syria received weapons and equipment for deadly attacks in Iraq’s major cities, according to the military statement.

At least 1,620 U.S. military members have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The offensive came amid a surge of militant attacks that has killed at least 440 people across Iraq since Iraq’s first democratically elected government was announced April 28.

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